Page 133 – LIFE

Mickey Cohen: Gangster in the Sun

August 10, 2021January 1, 2013 by

It might seem strange, at first, that a city as closely associated with sun and fun would also be the city that helped spawn, and has been the location for, so many classics in the great American literary and film genre known as noir. But the fact remains that acknowledged heavyweights like Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and James Ellroy as well as countless lesser writers set their sordid, riveting crime stories firmly in Los Angeles, while Hollywood’s greatest noir thrillers, from Double Indemnity to L.A. Confidential, have reveled in casting a cold, hard light on the shadowy underbelly of the City of Angels.

In 2013 the star-studded but not especially successful movie Gangster Squad added to the ranks of L.A. noir. The movie starred Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone and, most intriguingly, Sean Penn as a legendary Brooklyn-born Jewish mobster. As it so happens, Penn’s character—in real life a portly, dangerous and weirdly charismatic thug, Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen—was exactly the sort of mid-20th-century figure whose exploits and demeanor were catnip to the editors of LIFE magazine. It’s not that the men (and, very occasionally, women) calling the shots at LIFE were enamored of bookies and racketeers. But Mickey Cohen was one of those rare gangsters—Crazy Joe Gallo, another Brooklyn boy with his connections to show biz, also comes to mind—who were more than just mindless mob enforcers. Street-smart, disarmingly blunt and true to their own insular, twisted ethical code, criminals like Cohen and Gallo exuded a kind of rough, lethal charm. And like Gallo, Cohen was a bona fide celebrity in his lifetime even a kind of anti-establishment pop-culture hero.

In its January 16, 1950, issue, LIFE published a feature titled, simply, “Trouble in Los Angeles,” focusing on a wave of organized crime and political corruption so widespread it made supposedly crooked places like Chicago look like models of probity. Front and center in the piece was none other than Cohen himself, the fleshy, self-satisfied face of Southern California sociopathy an “exhibitionist hoodlum,” as LIFE characterized him. In fact, Cohen and his wife LaVonne appeared in several photos in the article, for all the world just another happily married couple who had settled in California for no other reason than the forgiving climate and who remained in L.A. because Mickey’s commercial concerns—nightclubs, flower shops, gas stations, Michael’s Exclusive Haberdashery on Sunset Boulevard, etc.—needed his constant attention.

Here, LIFE.com offers a series of photographs by Ed Clark from 1949 featuring Mickey and LaVonne Cohen in their natural environment, as they hoped the world might see them: quiet, sober, eminently respectable members of the community, without a care in the world, enjoying life beneath the kind and lidless California sun.

Original caption: “Gangster Mickey Cohen sits amid the front pages of newspapers that helped make him the city’s’ most infamous citizen, Los Angeles, 1949.”

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Angry and hungry, Mickey eats sandwich as he leaves home with cop who arrested him for cursing other officers. Mickey called arrest persecution.”

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen with his wife, LaVonne, at home, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen smells flowers at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen plays with dogs at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s wife, LaVonne, at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen at home with a book given to him by the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen’s enforcer, “Johnny Stomp” Stompanato (famously stabbed and killed by Lana Turner’s 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl Crane, in 1958), business manager Mike Howard and Cohen pose in Cohen’s office in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles with his business manager, Mike Howard, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gangster Mickey Cohen at home in Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen signs an autograph for a young fan, Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen hauled in by the cops, Los Angeles, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Mickey Cohen, 1949.

Ed Clark Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

LIFE With Jane Fonda: Behind the Scenes on the Camp Classic, ‘Barbarella’

December 22, 2020December 20, 2012 by

The list of movies that were dismissed by critics or that simply bombed at the box office when first released, only to enjoy a renaissance and renewed appreciation after years of neglect, is as long as it is distinguished. The Wizard of Oz, Blade Runner and It’s a Wonderful Life are just a few of the now-celebrated films that looked, on their first go ’round, like they were doomed to eternal obscurity.

And then there are movies like Barbarella. While the 1968 psychedelic-sci-fi-meets-soft-porn marvel doesn’t quite warrant the accolades accorded to genuine classics, it still has aged rather well for such a bizarre creation. No one in his or her right mind would ever call it great; but decades after it was unleashed on a head-scratching public, Barbarella feels like a movie that, if released today, might well garner raves for its garish retro stylings, or its warm evocation of late Sixties camp. Or something.

Love it or like it—very few people would admit actively hating it—Barbarella will probably last forever as a pop-culture curiosity not because it’s a misunderstood auteur gem, or because it was ahead of its time, but for one reason and one reason only: Jane Fonda. Playing a 41st-century “astronautical aviatrix” and “Queen of the Galaxy,” the 30-year-old Fonda gives a playful, sexy and self-possessed performance in the movie — in short, she appears to be having fun in the singularly absurd role, with its even more absurd outfits and preposterous plot twists. (In the future, it seems, clothing will be revealing, uncomfortable and, more often than not, made of hard plastic, while mad villains will occasionally attempt to vanquish their enemies via mechanically induced and literally heart-stopping orgasms.)

Here, LIFE.com presents a series of pictures—many of which were not published in LIFE—made on the set of Barbarella by Carlo Bavagnoli. Here is Henry Fonda’s precocious daughter, all grown up, married to Barbarella‘s director, Roger Vadim, and photographed at a pivotal point in her already remarkable career.

By 1968, after all, she had starred in well-received comedies like Cat Ballou (in the title role) and Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford. Within a few short years she would be winning major screen honors for example, the New York Film Critics Circle Award for They Shoot Horses Don’t They (1969) and for Klute (1971). For the latter, of course, she would also earn the first of her two Best Actress Oscars.

After Barbarella, Fonda would become a political lightning rod for her anti-Vietnam activism; she would earn the enduring enmity of countless veterans with a hugely controversial trip to Vietnam in 1972 that earned her the nickname (or badge of dishonor, depending on one’s perspective), “Hanoi Jane”; she would marry the prominent Sixties political activist Tom Hayden and, years later, “Captain Outrageous” himself, Ted Turner; she would remain, always, a vocal advocate for progressive causes.

She would, in short, lead (and she continues to lead) an absolutely amazing American life.

Barbarella, meanwhile, continues to lead its own only slightly less amazing life, as a cult classic and a prime example of a genre that, alas, has seen far too few entries of late: namely, futuristic goofball erotica. It might not have won its young star any awards, but all these years later, people still watch it, and many of those fans genuinely, without a trace of irony, enjoy it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Cover image from the March 29, 1968, issue of LIFE: Jane Fonda in the title role of the movie, Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

The set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda at the mercy of the evil Durand-Durand (Milo O’Shea) in the “excessive machine” on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda ensconced in the “excessive machine” on the set of Barbarella, 1968. At right is her husband, the director Roger Vadim.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda and her husband, the director Roger Vadim, on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda (in white) and other cast members on the set of Barbarella, 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda and Milo O’Shea (as Durand-Durand), 1968.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Guardian Angel (John Phillip) carried off Barbarella.

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Jane Fonda as Barbarella, 1968

Carlo Bavagnoli / The LIFE Picture Collection

Design Genius: Charles and Ray Eames

August 8, 2021December 15, 2012 by

Some things designed and built by our fellow humans are so much a part of our visual landscape that, even if they haven’t been around forever, it takes an effort of will to imagine a world without them. Several Apple products come to mind. The Brooklyn Bridge. The 1956 Corvette convertible (preferably candy-apple red … but any color will do).

These and so many other marvels of imagination and execution offer us a glimpse of that ideal world where form and function merge into a seamless and occasionally breathtaking whole. They are tools that are works of art. And vice versa.

And then there are those quieter, simpler, but no less-beautiful items (or their knock-offs and imitators) that are also, seemingly, everywhere and that somehow we so seldom really see. We take them for granted not only because they’re ubiquitous, but because they do exactly what they’re meant to do without calling attention themselves.

Case in point: the Eames molded-plywood LCW (“Lounge Chair Wood,” below), with a silhouette so familiar that it might have been there, in our collective field of vision, forever. Considering its organic lines, so pure that they have about them an air of inevitability, the “Eames chair” as it has long been known might have been carved into existence around the same time as, say, the buttes of Monument Valley. In reality, the famed husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames (rhymes with “dreams”) introduced the chair in the 1940s, and followed it up with a slew of other mid-century design and architecture icons, including their leather-and-molded-plywood lounge chair and ottoman; the IBM pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair; and their own lovely, perfectly Modernist California home, Eames House (1949).

Few design studios of the past 100 years can lay claim to as many innovations and as many influential creations as the practice that Charles and Ray ran for decades: the celebrated Eames Office. Here, LIFE.com offers a series of pictures many of which were not published in LIFE made in 1950 by photographer Peter Stackpole at the newly built Eames House. Today, the house is on the National Register of Historic Places and is an official National Historic Landmark. Back then, it was just another intriguing design by a man and woman who, in many ways, were literally helping to shape the second half of the 20th century.

As LIFE told its readers in the September 11, 1950 issue, in which some of these pictures first ran:

Charles Eames, whose stark, comfortable chairs in the last five years have made him the best-known U.S. designer of modern furniture and a winner in the Museum of Modern Art furniture competition, recently designed a house and adjoining studio for himself near Santa Monica, Calif. As might be expected of a man whose chief concerns are simplicity, functionalism and economy, Eames’s own house is simply built of steel trusses, bright stucco panels and treat curtained expanses of glass. It is extraordinarily functional, built for a couple that likes to live without servants or cocktail parties and work surrounded by the varied objects that interest them. And when work or contemplation pall, the Eameses have the ocean just across the meadow from their home.

Of the now-legendary 20th-century design object, the Eames chair, which Eames first introduced in 1946, LIFE wrote that its “popularity started slowly, then snowballed until it is now selling at the remarkable rate of 3,000 a month… A vague businessman, Eames does not know how much the chair has made for him… Eames is so interested making the products of his drawing board available at the lowest coast that the modest retail price of his newest chair ($32.50) bothers him [and] he guilty feels that it should sell for less.”

Eames likes to say his job is “the simple one of getting the most of the best to the greatest number of people for the least.” Few men are so earnestly dedicated to their jobs. To feed an insatiable interest in the looks of things, he and his wife take frequent sleeping-bag trips into the surrounding seaside and desert areas collecting weeds, rocks and driftwood whose appearance they want to study. Eames has a distaste for the superfluous that sometimes even affects his speech: “Take chair by wall,” he may invite a visitor. Commented awed movie director Billy (Sunset Boulevard) Wilder, “He even has the guts to sit there and be quiet if he hasn’t anything to say.”

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Charles Eames … earnest, reticent, eternally bow-tied man of 43. Decoration on heating duct at left is a piece of Eames whimsy.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Interior view shows living room’s 17-foot-high ceiling, unadorned steel-truss construction, to which Eames clamps lamps for varied lighting effects. He puts up the pilings from an old pier outside the door because he liked their looks. He similarly suspended a Chinese owl kite and toy French horn from the ceiling.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames House, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Natural designs embodied in Mojave desert plants fascinate Eames, who likes to mount them on the wall of his studio. From them, he says he gets ideas for his own designs.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames designed chairs, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” New toy, a part of which he is spinning here, was designed by Eames of colored cardboard sections which are easily joined by a child to form odd shapes.”

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles and Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames chair, 1950

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Eames-designed (and decorated) chair, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Eames with a chair he designed and decorated, California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ray Eames at home in California, 1950.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Exterior view of Eames’ house shows how it nudges into a hillside, is fronted by eucalyptus trees. The studio-office is at right, joined to house by a patio.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Refined Retail in Texas: Inside the First Neiman Marcus

December 30, 2019December 11, 2012 by

The store that was born on the corner of Ervay and Main Streets in Dallas has become, like most other things from Texas, larger than life. When Neiman Marcus was founded as a purveyor of luxury womenswear and goods in 1907 by department store buyer Herbert Marcus and his sister and brother-in-law, Carrie and A.L. Neiman, it was a gamble on an untapped market. Though Dallas is now an urban center, it was more of a down-home midwestern town when doors opened to the public on Sept. 10 of that year.

The gamble paid off—wealthy oil wives and society matrons quickly raided the racks of Neiman Marcus’ collection of on-trend finery, thankful for a fashionable outpost. Shoppers bought out its entire first inventory, earning the store $3,000 in its first year. By 1944, one year before these photos were taken for LIFE, it made $398,000.

Neiman Marcus helped turn Dallas into a new, off-center fashion metropolis. Its exclusive, personalized style earned it widespread recognition. In LIFE’s September 3, 1945, edition, the in-store shopping experience was characterized as such: “The store’s executives regularly roam through the departments, giving advice on some of the graver problems of fashion and sometimes sternly censoring salesgirls’ suggestions. They have been known to stop a $1,000 sale because they though the article bought was unsuited to the customer who wanted to buy it.”

Today, Neiman Marcus is equally as refined, but the store has grown much bigger than its Lone Star State britches. Its 42 locations across the U.S. are augmented by the annual Christmas catalogue. Released every year since 1939, it stirs up a mini dust storm of awe and incredulousness each year with its list of outrageous (in price and concept) gifts. The 2019 “Christmas Book” offered, among other extravagances, a $700,007 Aston Martin designed by Daniel Craig (aka James Bond), a $35,000 Moét & Chandon vending machine and a $70,000 luxury doghouse.

These frivolities only add to Neiman Marcus’ old-school glamour and charm. These previously unpublished LIFE photographs capture a postwar society decked out in sable neckpieces, birdcage veiled hats, and designer umbrellas. The attentive salesfolk and customized attention proved that fashion had a chance outside New York and Los Angeles any time of year.

The entrance to the Neiman-Marcus store in Dallas, 1945.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Models displayed the newest designs, sometimes before Fifth Avenue or Wilshire Boulevard saw them, in the fashion salon on the second floor.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Store clerks tried out jewelry to match the suit.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Guiberson, in the right photo, began to put together an ensemble.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Mrs. Guiberson tried on gloves, and was later shown umbrellas and handbags.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In the right image, Mrs. Guiberson topped off her outfit with a $750 sable neckpiece.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Neiman Marcus, 1945.

Nina Leen The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Little Richard: Unpublished Photos of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Original Wild Man

May 18, 2020December 4, 2012 by

These photographs of Little Richard, taken by LIFE’s Ralph Morse in 1971, are a little mysterious. None of these pictures ever ran in LIFE, and there’s no indication in the LIFE archives of why they were taken. Morse, for his part, doesn’t remember making them (“I have no idea who that guy is,” Morse told LIFE.com when shown a few of the photos before his passing in 2014.) The photos might have been part of an impromptu photo shoot perhaps at the Time & Life Building in New York, or maybe backstage at a concert. Perhaps the pictures of the flamboyant performer were never meant to appear at all.

What’s certain is that, four decades after they were made, these portraits of the Macon, Ga., native (he was born Richard Wayne Penniman on Dec. 5, 1932) capture at least a small part of the unnerving, unhinged charisma of the man many credit as the true originator of rock and roll. Little Richard, who died on May 9 at age 87, was the first true, living, breathing, screaming bridge between R&B and rock. Legions–Keith Richards, John Lennon and so many others—were inspired and influenced by him. An ordained minister whose immediate and extended family is strongly evangelical, Penniman also preached the Gospel to small rural congregations and to stadium-sized audiences of thousands.

By the time Morse made the pictures in this gallery, with Rock-n-Roll ascendent, Little Richard was more likely to thrill those who came to his concerts, then to shock them,. And right to the end of his performing life—he delivered Tutti Frutti to a Las Vegas crowd in 2013—his signature, wild-eyed polysexual look was still something to behold.

Little Richard, 1971

Ralph Morse The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Beyond Boundaries: Gordon Parks’ Fashion Photography of the 1950s

July 4, 2020November 30, 2012 by

Gordon Parks was a master of contradictions. His fashion photography captured the beauty and opulence of the 1940s and ’50s elite with carefully orchestrated framing and composition. But Parks was also renowned for his stirring images of poverty and racial discrimination. Parks” ability to transition from the slums of Chicago’s South Side to the sets of French fashion shoots not only demonstrated his wide-ranging talent, but also his knack for convincing even the most private subjects to pose in front of his lens.

Parks’ diverse and expansive catalog of creative works included countless photo collections; popular films such as Shaft and The Super Cops; three memoirs and an autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree; several books of poetry; a ballet (Martin, dedicated to Martin Luther King, Jr.); and musical compositions. It feels like the work of several lifetimes, Metaphorically, Parks, who died in 2006 at age 93, did live multiple lives, climbing his way from a life of poverty to great success.

Parks, born on Nov. 30, 1912, in Fort Scott, Kan., the son of a tenant farmer, was the youngest of 15 brothers and sisters. He attended a segregated elementary school and was told by a teacher that he should let go of his dreams of higher education. When Parks was 14, his mother died and he was sent to Saint Paul, Minn., to live with family. Shortly thereafter, he found himself turned out on the streets, learning to survive on his own.

Parks worked odd jobs. He was a piano player in a Minnesota brothel, as well as a busboy and waiter. In 1938, after seeing images in a discarded magazine, he was inspired to take up photography. He bought a camera at a pawn shop, and within months his pictures were exhibited in Minneapolis. His success as a photographer blossomed from there.

After moving to Chicago, Parks began to produce society and fashion photographs, while also pursuing his passion of documenting the hard lives of impoverished African Americans. “I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs,” Parks told an interviewer in 1999. “I knew at that point I had to have a camera.” His most famous images from this time were from a series documenting Chicago’s black ghetto—a collection that earned him a fellowship with the Farm Security Administration and catapulted his career.

Parks’ talent eventually led him to New York City, where, despite the racial prejudice of the time, he was hired by Vogue’s Alexander Liberman to shoot a collection of evening gowns. He continued to freelance for Vogue for several years, developing a distinctive style that was realistic, romantic and full of movement. In 1948, Parks was hired as the first African-American staff photographer and writer for LIFE, where he produced works on subjects ranging from fashion and sports to poverty and racial discrimination. He remained at the magazine for 23 years, becoming one of the title’s most popular and influential photographers.

French fashion model Simone Bodin posed at a tannery, in a leather suit printed in small neat design, 1956.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A model wore a nursemaid’s kerchief by Lilly Dache that had a stiff coronet and strings that went under her hair to tie through a loop at its back.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Models showed off ball gowns designed by Jacques Fath.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This sheath cocktail dress by Balenciaga was made from hundreds of scalloped bands of silk chiffon sewn on a straight slip, 1950.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

This dress and hat were by Cuban designer Adolfo; the hat featured multi-colored rosettes made of ribbon, 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A model wore a dusting cap of calico on a felt base which wrapped around her head like the scarf, 1952.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

French fashion models, 1950.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Ladies modeled tie-on collars and matching barrel muffs made of natural fox skin, 1952.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A California designer created this sheath dress topped by ostrich feathers, 1959.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Cuban designer Ferreras created this evening dress with a yellow rose design, 1958.

Gordon Parks The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

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